Chapter 16

'Finally, the Chunin Exams will start tomorrow!' Karma thought. Currently, he was roaming around the village as a cat. He couldn't wait for the Chunin Exams, with genin from other villages, he was sure to have fun hunts. Other than Naruto and Sasuke, he had yet to meet anyone he enjoyed chasing after. Even though he always caught them quick, they always claimed they would beat him. He knew about Gaara, but Karma thought he has to meet him to find out. 'When was that first confrontation suppose to happen?' He wondered.

"Sorry Gaara-" he heard someone say.

'This is it!' He thought as he ran towards the direction of the voices.

"Shut up." Someone else said. "If you don't shut up, I'll kill you."

That's when Karma arrived at the scene. There he saw, as he had hoped, Gaara stood upside on a tree branch, Sasuke on another. Temari and Kankuro stood on the ground, while across from them were Naruto, Sakura, the grandson of the Third Hokage, Konohamaru and his friends.

"Hey, what's going on here? Can I join?" Karma called out once he got close. Everyone turned to look at him curiously except Gaara, who just glared.

"Eh? What's with this cat?" Temari said.

Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura looked at each other, then at Karma then Sakura replied, "We don't know." They all shrugged.

"What's with you guys? You don't recognize me? Sure my form is different, but it's obvious that I'm me. My ears and tail are the same. Even my fur is the same color as my hair. Though, I guess I should be in tiger form." Karma complained.

"Do you know the weird cat?" Naruto asked the Sand genin.

"Never seen it before in my life." Kankuro replied.

Karma sighed and reverted back to his human appearence. "Come on, guys. It's obvious. Especially to you, Sasuke. You know about my clan." He did have clothes on, since he had good control over his transformation.

"EH?! KARMA?!" Naruto yelled. Sasuke and Sakura were a little dazed. Sasuke more so because he felt embarrassed he couldn't tell it was Karma. It was true, after all, he knew the Nekotsume Clan could turn into cats.

"Yeah, took you long enough." Karma snorted.

"Wow! Another piece of eye candy! And this one can actually be kept as a pet!! Can we take him home after we're done here? I promise I'll take care of him..." Temari exclaimed, though the last part was a joke.

"I'm not sure you could handle me. I'm what's known as a wild animal. Thank you for the compliment though, you're not so bad yourself." Karma replied. He tried flirting for the first time on Temari. He thought he should start taking a more active approach since he had seen many who didn't and he deemed them failures as men, even if he had no interest in sex at the time. Being inactive and losing out on women wasn't going to be his style at least. Neither was acting dense because he didn't know what to do, he'd just wing it.

What he didn't expect was for Sakura to immediately take off running afterwards. Karma had an idea what she thought, so he just said "I'll give you guys an honorable defeat if we have to fight against each other during the Chunin Exams!" and went after Sakura. With shunpo it didn't take long before caught up with her. From watching other worlds, he expected Sakura to be crying, but instead she seemed more determined than ever.

"Sakura?" He called.

"Karma? Weren't you talking to that Sand Village Genin?" She replied a little angrily.

That was more like what he was expecting. "Listen, Sakura. In the future, I will definitely have a harem. I like you, Kushina, Hinata, and Ino among others. If you can't accept that, I think you should give up." Karma informed Sakura. "Also, even though I don't care too much if you're weak, I would prefer you weren't. And tell Ino and Hinata all this too. I know you're probably going to talk to them about it." Sakura opened her mouth to reply, but Karma had already left.

"I won't give up." She said to no one in particular, clenching her fist.

=====

Back with Naruto:

"Who was that?" Gaara asked.

""Gaara?!" Temari and Kankuro yelled in shock. Gaara showing an interest in someone meant they were as good as dead. Him showing interest in Karma was a shock because while they couldn't tell anything special about him aside from his ears and tail. 'Maybe he's jealous of how attractive he is?' Temari pondered. 'But Gaara isn't the type to care...'

"That was Karma Nekotsume! He's the heir of the Nekotsume Clan, and he's really strong." Naruto answered. "But I'm stronger than him!"

"Oh? Heir of the Nekotsume Clan?" Temari asked.

"Naruto! Don't give them any more information!" Sasuke reprimanded Naruto.

"It's fine, Karma would probably thank me. Besides, don't you want to get revenge on him?" Naruto asked with a sly smirk.

"The Nekotsume Clan are a clan of experts in nature transformation. Every prominent member of the clan can combine at least two of the basic five nature transformations, Karma probably can too. I don't know much about his actual abilities, but every technique he and his sister use seems to be created by them. Some are altered forms of already known techniques. They're also extremely fast. Something normal since their clan is renowned for their speed, even the current Clan Heads speed is considered equal to or faster than the fourth Hokage, you should have heard of the 'Flash Goddess,' that's her." Sasuke said. Then he grinned saying, "Oops, I didn't mean to say that out loud. Let's go, Naruto!"

"Yeah, back to preparing for the Chunin Exams!" Naruto exclaimed as he and Sasuke departed.

'He was faster than even the reaction of my sand!' Gaara thought. 'Good. There's so many good prey to kill!' "Sasuke Uchiha, Karma Nekotsume, his sister, this is good. Let's go, Kankuro, Temari."

"Gaara, I think we should be careful-" Temari started.

"Shut up. Do you think I can't kill them, Temari? At the very least, I know I can kill you." Gaara interrupted with a glare.

"I-I'm sorry, Gaara! I-"

"Enough. If you don't shut up, I'll kill you right now. Let's go."